This fate is nearly impossible to avoid in any field that remotely touches on abortion or origin-of-life issues. “There [are] no people who are just sitting in a lab, working on their projects,” said O. Carter Snead, a professor of law and political science at Notre Dame who served as general counsel to President George W. Bush’s Council of Bioethics. “Everybody is politicized.” This is true even of researchers like Reid, who was blindsided by the reaction to his findings. “You can’t do this and not get sucked into somebody’s orbit,” said Largent, the Michigan State professor. “Everyone’s going to take your work and use it for their ends. If you’re going to do this, you either decide who’s going to get to use your work, or it’s done to you.”

That can have a chilling effect on scientists who work in sensitive areas related to conception or death. Abortion is “the third-rail of research,” said Debra Mathews, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins who also has responsibility for science programs at the university’s bioethics institute.* “If you touch it, your research becomes associated with that debate.” Although the abortion debate is important, she said, it can be intimidating for researchers: “It tends to envelop whatever it touches.”

As often as not, scientists dive into the debate, taking funding from pro-life or pro-choice organizations or openly advancing an ideological position. This, too, has consequences: It casts doubt on the validity and integrity of any researcher in bioethics-related fields. “Anybody with money can get a scientist to say what they want them to say,” said Largent. “That’s not because scientists are whores. It’s because the world is a really complex place, and there are ways that you can craft a scientific investigation to lend credence to one side or another.”

The promise of personalized medicine is a pretty big one: Tailoring treatments to a patient’s genes, their environment or their lifestyle, the thinking goes, will result in treatments that are much more likely to work. The same disease can manifest differently in different people, so why treat patients with a one-size-fits-all-approach?

The promise of personalized medicine is a pretty big one: Tailoring treatments to a patient’s genes, their environment or their lifestyle, the thinking goes, will result in treatments that are much more likely to work. The same disease can manifest differently in different people, so why treat patients with a one-size-fits-all-approach?

But a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that, if personalized medicine really takes off, it could actually wind up hurting the pace of biomedical innovation.

Here’s why: Say there’s a personalized lung cancer drug targeted at the specific genetic mutation involved in causing the cancer. Not every lung cancer patient will have that same mutation. Instead, there are likely to be many different biomarkers associated with the same cancer. That means that if a drug works, instead of having a blockbuster drug for a common disease on its hand, the company that developed the drug will have a drug tailored to a much smaller market of patients. And that, the paper suggests, could “reduce some of the incentives for innovation.”

That’s not the only market impact the NBER expects tailored therapies will have. The more effective the therapy, the paper suggests, the bigger the price tag might be. At the same time, it could also reduce the cost of drugs by “allowing more sophisticated pricing systems and potentially decreasing the costs of drug development through shorter and more focused trials.” It could drastically alter what kinds of drugs are actually profitable to bring to market. It might mean that drugs targeting the same disease but different biomarkers could vary significantly in cost. The narrow scope of personalize drugs could also raise the problem of monopolies.

Although vaccines typically take years to produce, test, and license, US health officials had voiced confidence that Zika would not be a difficult target, and some predicted that a vaccine could be made and fully tested, ready for FDA assessment, within two to three years. Others predicted a licensed Zika vaccine could be available sometime in 2020

Although vaccines typically take years to produce, test, and license, US health officials had voiced confidence that Zika would not be a difficult target, and some predicted that a vaccine could be made and fully tested, ready for FDA assessment, within two to three years. Others predicted a licensed Zika vaccine could be available sometime in 2020

Early this month, the vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur quietly pulled the plug on its Zika vaccine efforts, a reflection of some complications in the development of the vaccine as well as of evaporating market prospects and limited U.S. government funding.

The company said the latter factor — word that the government would not fully fund the vaccine work — was the key. Without full government funding of the program “we could not continue development of a Zika vaccine,” said Jon Heinrichs, the Sanofi executive who led the effort. “We still don’t see that this would be a profitable vaccine for Sanofi Pasteur.”

Consider the case of the anti-depressant Paxil, produced by the drug company SmithKline Beecham (now part of GlaxoSmithKline). GSK got approval from the FDA in 1999 for treatment of depression in adults, but not in teenagers. That meant that while doctors could prescribe the drug to adolescents — a so-called “off label” prescription — GSK could not promote the drug to doctors for that purpose.

But the company did just that, according to criminal and civil complaints filed by the Justice Department and a suit by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. What’s more, the Justice Department claimed, GSK selectively and misleadingly released information about three studies it had conducted of the drug: It hired a consulting company to write a journal article that played up evidence from one study that the drug worked better as a treatment for pediatric depression than a placebo, played down (better) evidence from the same study that it hadn’t, and soft-pedaled the side effects.

In the late 1960s, a team of researchers began doling out a nutritional supplement to families with young children in rural Guatemala. They were testing the assumption that providing enough protein in the first few years of life would reduce the incidence of stunted growth.

It did. Children who got supplements grew 1 to 2 centimetres taller than those in a control group. But the benefits didn’t stop there. The children who received added nutrition went on to score higher on reading and knowledge tests as adolescents, and when researchers returned in the early 2000s, women who had received the supplements in the first three years of life completed more years of schooling and men had higher incomes1.

The trick was to grow these alongside trophoblast stem cells, which normally produce the placenta. By growing these two types of cell separately and then combining them in a special gel matrix, the two mixed and started to develop together.

After around four-and-a-half days, the embryos resembled normal mouse embryos that were about to start differentiating into different body tissues and organs.

“They are very similar to natural mouse embryos,” says Zernicka-Goetz. “We put the two types of stem cells together – which has never been done before – to allow them to speak to each other. We saw that the cells could self-organise themselves without our help.”

This is the first time something resembling an embryo has been made from stem cells, without using an egg in some way. Techniques such as cloning, as done for Dolly the sheep and other animals, bypass the need for sperm, but still require an egg cell.

Marlene McCarthy’s breast cancer has grown relentlessly over the past seven years, spreading painfully through her bones and making it impossible to walk without a cane. Although the 73-year-old knows there’s no cure for her disease, she wants researchers to do better

Marlene McCarthy’s breast cancer has grown relentlessly over the past seven years, spreading painfully through her bones and making it impossible to walk without a cane. Although the 73-year-old knows there’s no cure for her disease, she wants researchers to do better

It’s been years, she said, since she has found a drug that has actually helped. McCarthy said she’s frustrated that the Food and Drug Administration is approving cancer drugs without proof that they cure patients or help them live longer.

“That simply isn’t good enough,” said McCarthy, of Coventry, R.I. “I understand [why] that could be satisfactory for some people. It isn’t to me.”

Pushed by patient advocates who want earlier access to medications, the­ FDA has approved a flurry of oncology drugs in recent years, giving some people with cancer a renewed sense of hope and an array of expensive new options. A few of these drugs have been clear home runs, allowing patients with limited life expectancies to live for years.

Not so fast, says one key UK expert. “It’s too soon,” said philosopher Mary Warnock, who chaired a committee in the 1980s that informed current regulations. “What we should do now is give people who do research the chance to exploit what they can find out between 5 and 14 days.”

Not so fast, says one key UK expert. “It’s too soon,” said philosopher Mary Warnock, who chaired a committee in the 1980s that informed current regulations. “What we should do now is give people who do research the chance to exploit what they can find out between 5 and 14 days.”

LONDON—It’s a looming question facing biologists, ethicists, and society as a whole: Should scientists be allowed to study embryos cultured in the lab beyond 14 days after fertilization? Perhaps in the future, but not just yet, one highly influential voice said at a meeting here today.

“It’s too soon,” said philosopher Mary Warnock, who chaired a committee in the 1980s that informed current regulations. “What we should do now is give people who do research the chance to exploit what they can find out between 5 and 14 days.” That will help build the case for what benefits might come from doing research on embryos older than 14 days, Warnock argued.

Currently, biologists in the United Kingdom and many other countries are not allowed to culture human embryos in the laboratory longer than 14 days. This never posed a constraint because it wasn’t possible to keep embryos alive longer than about a week anyway. But earlier this year, two teams succeeded in keeping embryos alive for 13 days, reigniting the debate about the legal limit. (Their work is among the finalists for the People’s Choice for Science’s Breakthrough of the Year.) Experts discussed the hopes and concerns of extending the limit at a daylong workshop held here today by the Progress Educational Trust, a nonprofit that promotes public understanding of embryology, human genetic research, and assisted reproduction.